Building a Content Management System for IoT Environments

Managing content for the Internet-of-Things poses it's very own challenges and requirements. Over the course of a year we built such a system that integrates with various other components. This talk covers both technical and organizational topics, focusing on PHP specific challenges of running an application in the cloud and communicating with other systems.

Transcript

1. PHPUG München / 2015-11-25 Max Kleucker (@maxlmator) Building a Content Management System for IoT Environments
2. (code) lessons learnt
3. 1. Intro 2. Developing 3. Operations
4. Internet of Things
6. Content Management System
7. Content Delivery Repository
8. Intro Project History • Started in October 2014 • 5-day Prototype • Team grew from 2 to 12 members • Support for 28 locales (and growing)
9. CDR • Recipes • Manuals, Tips for Devices • Localization for App • Assets for App • ... { Intro Content for IoT
10. Intro Technology • Drupal 7 • Custom modules for • communication with 
 3rd-party-components • workflow & permissions
11. CDR 3rd party systems Apps import data push data create, enrich, translate Translation System automatic translation
12. CDR 3rd party systems Apps import data push data create, enrich, translate Translation System automatic translation
13. Automatic Translation CDR Translation System content, rendered in XML files translated content, rendered in XML files content import
14. CDR 3rd party systems Apps import data push data create, enrich, translate Translation System automatic translation
15. Content Deployment CDR App Server content, rendered as single JSON files (using Twig) + referencing meta-file media assets, saved in a S3 bucket references
16. Content Deployment CDR App Server provides app localisation fetches media assets fetches relevant content
17. Content Deployment CDR App Server provides app localisation fetches media assets fetches relevant content
18. Intro Recap • Asynchronous communication w/ 3rd parties • No direct interaction with end-users • Difficult to accommodate various workflow-requirements
19. 1. Intro 2. Developing 3. Operations
20. Develop Dev Environment { { using looking into
21. Develop Automated Testing
22. Develop Get to know your framework
23. <?php $nodes = [1,17,28,73]; // Variant 1: Slow foreach($nodes as $node){ node_delete($node); } // Variant 2: Much faster node_delete_multiple($nodes);
24. Develop Ask a colleague +(| )=
25. Develop Recap • Demand for communication increases with team size • Let your tools help you, keep an eye on new tools • Dig deep into the systems you're using
26. 1. Intro 2. Developing 3. Operations
27. Operations PHP in the cloud Elastic Beanstalk
 (Application) S3
 (File Storage) RDS (Database)
28. Operations Elastic Beanstalk • Challenges: • No persistent file system • Multiple instances that don't know about each other
29. • Requirement: • WYSIWYG with File Picker • Two options: • Use S3 library • Mount the S3 Bucket on the filesystem (s3fs) • But: • Is it feasible for users to search in gigabytes of files? Operations Using S3
30. • Requirement: • Keep the down time at a minimum during production releases • Our attempts: • Try to decouple any long running jobs from the application • Move imports / exports to a different machine Operations Long running jobs
31. • Sending E-Mails • Using a centralized relay instead of dealing with Host configurations • Logging • Gather logs in a central place • Evaluate with 3rd party tools (e.g. ELK-Stack) Operations Decouple functionality
32. Operations Recap • Try to continually improve your system and workflow • Technical limitations and bottlenecks might also hint at different usability issues
33. Current Status • Organisational • More Device-Types, more countries, more content • Technical • Re-Evaluating Drupal as basis system • Improving the UI based on user feedback • Business requirements =/= Real world usage
34. thank you. questions?